4 ms·
It is not that we are so efficient, but that a priviledged tiny cabal have learned how to push the consequences of their mistakes to the rest of the population.
by crpatino 9y ago
It is not that we are so efficient, but that a priviledged tiny cabal have learned how to push the consequences of their mistakes to the rest of the population.
To borrow your example: In agricultural age, if you fucked up harvest your family starves. Today, if you fuck up the housing market, thousand of families end up in bankrupcy, and tens of thousands of small investors loose their savings... but you do not personally know any of them, so you wont even feel shame when you cash-in that million dollar yearly bonus.
There's historic precedent for that kind of divorce between actions and consequences, and it is not pretty. There's a certain French doctor you should google: his name's Josheph Guillotin.
- mercurial 9y ago> There's historic precedent for that kind of divorce between actions and consequences, and it is not pretty. There's a certain French doctor you should google: his name's Josheph Guillotin. I'm not sure what analogy you are going for. Guillotin did not invent the guillotine, and only advertised it as a more humane way of execution. He was opposed to the death penalty.
- acabal 9y agoThey're referring to the French Revolution, and then the Terror. One of the causes of the revolution was the poor being fed up with the massive wealth imbalance. An economic depression was making the masses starve in the streets, while the wealthy 1% enjoyed lives of comfort and luxury enabled by the rigged aristocratic land-owning system. So the peasants had their bloody revolution, killed a lot of the aristocrats using Dr. Guillotine's invention, and now we have modern France. (This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of a complex historical topic. Please feel free to correct me.)
- mercurial 9y agoI am well aware of the French revolution and its causes, thank you. As I said, Guillotin did not invent the machine. He did not like death penalty, but if it had to be done, he would rather have had it done by a machine than by axe or sword (for the nobility) which occasionally did not kill in one hit, or by hanging (for the ordinary populace). The actual inventor of the guillotine is one Antoine Louis [1]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Louis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Louis
- maxxxxx 9y agoI agree with the first two paragraphs but Guillotin is not good example. A better example would be the decision to go to war in Iraq. The people who made that decision didn't have to send their own children and they could enact large tax cuts for themselves in addition at the same time. So they got their war but didn't feel any consequence.
- crpatino 9y agoAgreed on the Iraq example. One of the things that ancient European nobility got right was to put their own children in the front lines as low or middle level army officers. The rank lieutenant literaly comes from the French for "land owner". That way, if it came to the worst, peasant and lord may mourn together; the social fabric remained (mostly) unharmed. Which is what I expected to hint the the mention of Guillotin: the French Revolution. That did not happend because of social injustice. No human society has ever been 100% fair, -and probably none will, ever,- and most people is able to accept that without making a fuss about it. The problem with the Ancien Regime back then, -which is the same problem with financial elites nowadays,- is that they have become increasingly detached from the realities of their decisions for the rank and file, even to the point of cluelessness.
- johngalt 9y agoWouldn't Robespierre be a better example than Guillotin?
- crpatino 9y agoYou are right on every account, but you have to actually know who Robespierre was to get the pun.